A group seeking to end wolf reintroduction in Colorado says it’s going back to the drawing board after failing to collect the voter signatures needed to get a measure on the November 2026 ballot.
Patrick Davis, lead organizer for Coloradans for Smart Wolf Policy, the group backing Proposition 13, said Wednesday evening the group had collected 25,000 signatures and was still counting. That was well short of the 125,000 signatures needed to get the initiative before voters next year.
The group’s deadline to turn in its signatures was Wednesday.
Coloradans for Smart Wolf Policy said it wouldn’t submit the signatures it collected. Davis said if Smart Wolf Policy decides to go for it in a future election cycle, “we’ll have a running start” because “we can go back to the people who circulated our petitions for us.”
Voters in 2020 narrowly approved Proposition 114, the ballot measure creating the wolf reintroduction program.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife began the work in December 2023, releasing 10 wolves in Grand and Summit counties between then and January 2024 and another 15 in Pitkin and Eagle counties in January 2025. A spokesperson for CPW said the agency is already working to source wolves for its next release this winter.
But last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers representing the Western Slope introduced a bill during the special legislative session to pause wolf reintroduction — and some related spending — for one year and redirect $264,000 from the wolf program into the state’s health insurance premium discount.
Those lawmakers abandoned their attempt to pause wolf reintroduction, but reached a deal with Gov. Jared Polis to redirect money set aside to bring more gray wolves into the state this year into a fund aimed at driving down health care costs.
If the bill passes, Colorado Parks and Wildlife will have to find the money elsewhere.
Luke Perkins, agency spokesperson, said House Bill 21-1243 calls for wolf reintroduction efforts to be funded by the following: the Species Conservation Trust Fund, the Colorado Nongame Conservation and Wildlife Restoration Cash Fund or the Wildlife Cash Fund, which includes funding generated by the Born to Be Wild license plate and from the Colorado Lottery “spillover, except for money within the fund that comes from hunting and fishing license sales and associated federal grants,” he said.
Davis said the signatures his group collected show voters “evenly distributed between the Front Range and the northwest part of the state,” support ending the program.
A news release says the group will “resume the ballot initiative if the state and federal governments fail to stop the scientific fraud of wolf trafficking.”